


i swallow the sound and it swallows me whole

by hypotheticalfanfic



Series: various storms + saints [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: She has earned this.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Yasha/Zuala (Critical Role)
Series: various storms + saints [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144124
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	i swallow the sound and it swallows me whole

“Got a salve for that,” a scratchy rumble echoed against her back. Yasha glanced over her shoulder - she hadn’t realized Caduceus was awake. “Unless you want them to hurt. Fine if you do, I’ve also got one just to keep ‘em clean. Your call.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice as soft as she possibly could make it. “I’d like the one that cleans them, please.”

“Once I’m up,” he said, then let out a long low snore. She looked at her fingertips, raw and red from harp strings, and let herself smile.

The dome felt too close, too warm. Beau was a furnace at night, and Yasha pressed a feather-light kiss to her cheek; her love stirred just a bit, but settled back. Every time Yasha left the dome - rarer, now, than it had been - she felt as though she was being born, or perhaps a though she was stepping out of ahot spring: pressure, a sucking sound, a pop, and warmth turned to ice around her. It is cold outside, bare feet on snow. She was not crazy, not anymore. Thunder to the east, and she could nearly smell the lightning. She stood.She watched. The lightning sang across the storm, and she felt whole. Closed her eyes and listened.

* * *

Once upon a time, the Orphanmaker earned her name. She did the work handed to her, well and without flinching, and she had earned it.

Once upon a time, the Orphanmaker kissed a handsome woman with long, tangled hair. When they married beneath the sky, a warm rain fell, and they thought it a blessing, and that they had earned it.

Once upon a time, Yasha woke up with her hands caked in blood - her own? the Skyspear’s? both? - and wept, just the once. One time. She had disobeyed, and the reward had been pain, and she had earned it.

Once upon a time—

* * *

The crash of thunder shook her out of her reverie. She stared upward, icy rain pummeling her face, and smiled. He was still here. It hurt. Good. She had earned it.

When little Yasha, last-born and shy, was very small, the tribe had hosted a storyteller, a traveler. The woman had been old, so much older than most of the tribe, and had woven stories and songs into gleaming nights of happiness. Just before she left, little Yasha, frightened already, had asked for one last tale. The woman had looked at her in a way that, grown now, still shook Yasha to her core. Then she had begun:

A woman bore three sons in a row, and as they always have, the tribe sent them away to others. A woman in another tribe took the youngest in and raised him to be a husband, skilled with chldren and handy with a needle. Another woman in a different tribe took in the second, and raised him to be a singer, handsome and witty with a beautiful voice. And the first son was raised by the matriarch of a tribe, and raised him to be a warrior, strong and fast and quick with a bow.

And when the seeing serpent whispered through the sky, the three sons found themselves fighting it. The husband fed his daughters and his wife, bound wounds and prayed always, kept the fires burning to call his people home. The singer bolstered spirits, laughed and pinched and teased his people into another day’s battle, through a fever and a death and a loss, a loss, a thousand losses. And the warrior fell, his axe cleaving a beast in two, his body even in death aimed to protect his friends. And from his fallen meat sprang the red-black moss that staunches our wounds.

And when the firebird flew overhead, the two remaining sons carried on. The husband ferried babies beneath the earth, boiled leathers to make soup, gave what ease he could to the battered and broken. The singer prayed, and prayed, and emerged with a song of endless battle, of bravery beyond imagining, of eternal life at the edge of the storm. And when he fell, the singer, his song flew out of him and became one hundred white birds, whose feathers give us warmth in winter.

And when the toothworm roared up from the ground, all that was left was the husband, and he felt his mind begin to go. He shuffled the children of the tribe behind him, and faced the creature, and opened his hands. He said, “I am a man of peace. Will you go?” And though he was not strong, and though he was not handsome, and though the worm could have gobbled him and the whole tribe up at once, it instead seemed to peer at him, to think. The man stood firm, his family behind him, and waited. And when the worm left, the man remained, and his tribe survived, and his children number into the stars.

And elsewhere, the woman who had borne him felt a wave of peace, a spark of joy, though she knew not why.

* * *

Yasha had always thought that would make a good song. The words, though, had never come to her. She had tried, a little, but had told it badly. Zuala had been the talker, the teller of tales; Yasha had simply played along. Accompaniment. But, once they reached a place to rest, perhaps she’d try again. Beau was good at words, at least when not talking about her feelings, had read so much. And Caleb, of course. And Jester, whose mother sang so beautifully. Fjord knew his own songs, the work songs from the ship, and Veth knew songs for a harvest, and Caduceus knew songs for the grave. And Molly—she stopped. She had thought to begin the song at the circus, with them, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Perhaps in her song, a colorful tiefling would flicker into view, just for a moment. Perhaps.

She stood in the rain a moment longer, humming to herself a little. She’d found a bit of melody she liked, and it felt like a seed. It sounded, a little, like the tuneless tune Caleb hummed sometimes as he worked. A bit more, perhaps, like the whistled air Molly had played with while sewing up a costume or picking a pocket. She wondered if the Stormlord had hymns to his name; Jester had written songs for the Traveler, mostly repurposed bawdy tunes, and she knew the Wildmother had songs. Beau knew paeans to the Knowing Mistress existed, though it was a gap in her otherwise broad knowledge of fuckin’ everything.

She thought, perhaps, she’d give the man some friends. People to form ranks behind him, to brace him as he stood. She thought of the toothworm, so much like the ones she’d seen now, and thought of how to tell it in a tale. The rain slowed, began to peter out, and Yasha sat in muddled snow on muddy ground. Her harp was back in the dome, and so she just imagined: this string, then that. Hummed the bit of tune she’d found. Yes. That would work.

It would not be ready for a long, long time. But Yasha was very hard to kill, and Beau would someday rule the Soul if not the world. And their friends, for all their wild hares and weaknesses, would not abandon them. Even if the Nein scattered to the many corners of Exandria, she knew, they’d come when called for. She thought of how to weave that thread into the song: the man, seeing a fight coming, calling for his scattered family to stand with him. How she’d sing the sun over the horizon, catching the toothworm's hideous hide and catching, too, on the armor and swords of the man’s friends rushing to him. It would be a good song.

“Hey,” Beau’s voice scratched, not yet awake. “Fuckin’ cold out here.”

“Yes.” Yasha opened her eyes, looked behind her. “I was just thinking.” In the dark, Beau was hard enough to make out; the red eyes still shone ever so slightly, even under the wraps Beau covered them with each day. “Bad dreams?”

Beau snorted, came to sit beside her. “No. Well, not worse than usual, I mean. Just woke up.” Beau tilted her head back, and Yasha watched the last few drops of rain trace through her love’s hair. “This is nice.”

“Yeah,” Yasha said. “It was a good storm.” She pulled Beau closer to her, and together they watched the rainclouds roll away. In an hour or so the others would wake, and they would step into a frankly terrible plan Yasha had missed half of, and more than likely it would go badly wrong very, very fast. But for right now, Yasha had rain and mud and snow, a song taking shape in her mind, her love warm beside her, her friends at her back. Somewhere the Stormlord smiled, and somewhere the song waited for her to find it. She had earned this, half a hundred times, and it was hers now.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Drumming Song" by Florence + the Machine
> 
> > But as the water fills my mouth,  
> > it couldn't wash the echoes out.  
> > I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole  
> > till there's nothing left inside my soul.
> 
> (Did I hurry to finish this before the [recently-announced comic](https://twitter.com/CriticalRole/status/1369335859745464321)? Maybe.)


End file.
